


One of Those Guys

by Mireille



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: lgbtfest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-30
Updated: 2008-05-30
Packaged: 2019-03-21 11:16:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13739715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Xander gets there eventually.





	One of Those Guys

Jesse didn't count because they never  _did_  anything.   
  
There was a lot of staring, and a lot of turning beet-red at comments that seemed perfectly innocent yesterday, and a  _lot_  of wishful thinking, but that was it.  
  
After a while, it got easy to believe that they never  _would_  have done anything, either. He wouldn't have it so bad for Buffy if he'd been into Jesse like  _that_. That wasn't how it worked. Xander was sure of that.   
  
And the only remotely good thing to come out of what happened to Jesse was that there was nobody to contradict him.   
  


****

  
  
  
Xander knew what it looked like. He didn't  _blame_  Willow for the weird looks she'd given him for the rest of the evening. But it wasn't like that at all.  
  
He wasn't jealous of Angel. Or, well, he  _was_ , because Angel got to have the cool leather jacket and the man-of-mystery deal and Buffy lusting over him, and all Xander had was a heartbeat.   
  
It had nothing to do with Angel. And if he noticed that Angel was hot (well, technically lukewarm), it was just him trying to non-literally put himself in Buffy's shoes.   
  
So while he knew what it looked like, he also knew what it  _was_. And if it was all about Buffy, there was nothing even a little bit gay about it.   
  


****

  
  
It looked like they were going to pretend Xander hadn't said anything.   
  
That worked for him, definitely. There were a lot more important things to worry about, like where the hell Buffy had gone. So Xander blurting something stupid out in the middle of a rescue situation that already had him so terrified he'd felt like he was going to throw up? Hardly even a blip on the radar.   
  
Especially since it'd been stupid. In Xander's head, it was fine, but it came out sounding bitter, like Xander wanted Giles to be happier to see him, and that meant people, like maybe Giles, might jump to the wrong conclusion.   
  
He wished Cordelia had stuck around for the summer, because then Giles would remember that Xander had a girlfriend, and Xander wouldn't have to wonder whether Giles really hadn't thought any more about it, or if he was just being tactful.   
  


****

  
  
  
He definitely liked having sex with Anya. He particularly liked that she'd never tried to kill him, not to mention the fact that she seemed to like sex with him just as much, if not more.   
  
And he liked Anya, too--or, at least, he didn't  _dislike_  Anya, and he thought he could probably get to like her, in time. They just hadn't had a lot of time to get to know each other, even if they'd been to prom together.   
  
But that meant that hanging out with Anya was still at the "strange and awkward" stage, which given the way Anya talked, could be pretty darned strange. So it made good sense that he was still hanging out with Giles a lot.   
  
And because he wasn't totally unobservant, he noticed things like Giles giving up the tweed for jeans and baggy sweaters--but it wasn't because he'd been  _looking_.   
  
Guys who liked having sex with women didn't look at other guys like that, and Anya was proof that Xander was one of those guys.   
  


****

  
  
It was too bad there really hadn't been a good time to talk to Buffy about things; she might have thought that Xander meant what he said about having sex with Riley. He got the feeling sometimes, after he said something like that, that the girls were looking at him strangely for a while.   
  
The answer, of course, was "not serious  _at all_ ," because Riley wasn't Xander's type. Xander's type was small and curvy and at least occasionally blonde; it wasn't big and manly and muscular. Sure, if it  _had_  been, Riley would have been at the top of Xander's list--at least, if he hadn't been Buffy's boyfriend--because Riley was, objectively and heterosexually speaking, not bad to look at, and a pretty nice guy on top of that.   
  
But Xander had actual concrete proof that he was into girls, in the form of Anya, his girlfriend, who he… really cared about, even if he wasn't sure he was ready for anything more than that, and so he was allowed to make comments about Riley all he wanted.   
  
Just… maybe not in front of the girls, for a while, just to make sure they didn't think he was serious.   
  


****

  
  
  
Giles' singing? Disturbing beyond  _belief_. One of the most seriously wrong things that had ever happened to him, and he knew "wrong" when he heard it.   
  
Wrong in the sense that it should be  _illegal_. In fact, Xander wasn't entirely sure there wasn't something supernatural about it. Maybe not intentionally--Xander trusted Giles, after all, and besides, after the fit Giles threw about that stupid love spell Xander tried out back in high school, he'd never do anything like this. But maybe he had been that stupid, back when he was black-magic-bad-attitude guy, and he'd put a spell on the guitar, and then forgot all about it.   
  
There was definitely magic involved, though, because while Giles was a pretty good singer, he wasn't good enough that just listening to him sing was going to make a previously straight guy start batting for the other team. That  _had_  to be something supernatural.   
  
Unfortunately for Xander, knowing there was a supernatural cause lurking behind the inappropriate lust didn't do anything to make it  _go away_. And what was he supposed to do, go into the Magic Box and ask for some kind of de-gaying spell? Considering Anya's probable reaction to that one (she might strangle him, and she might decide they should watch gay porn together, and Xander wasn't sure which was more horrifying),  _not_  an option.   
  


****

  
  
  
This time, he couldn't even  _blame_  Buffy for that crack she made about him and Spike. Seriously, what the hell had he been thinking? "Compact"? "Well-muscled"? That was the kind of conversation that left him looking at himself in the mirror and asking himself if his mouth was actually connected to his brain, or not. Current evidence pointed to "not."   
  
Okay, so maybe he  _was_  able to appreciate that Spike, while evil (maybe Evil Lite these days, but evil) was hot. At least, for those people who appreciated masculine hotness. Like, for example, Buffy.   
  
And  _not_  like, for example, him.   
  
Because even though if you looked at things one way (for the record, that would be the way that was both askew  _and_  cock-eyed, pun  _absolutely_  not intended), you could probably put together a lot of evidence that showed that he, Xander Harris, might possibly have more than a purely theoretical appreciation of male hotness, you would be wrong.   
  
He wasn't like that. He was just secure enough in his own heterosexual masculinity that…   
  
Okay, maybe that wasn't it.   
  
But he wasn't gay, and he had the girlfriend, and the ex-girlfriend, and the crushes on women, to prove it.   
  
Even though when he thought about it too long, he started to think that maybe he wasn't entirely  _straight_ , either.   
  
Well, he wasn't going to think about it any more. That way led to panic and possibly rioting in the streets.   
  
He'd just blame it on Spike and forget about it.   
  


****

  
  
If that was what a fatherly conversation was like, Xander was glad his real father didn't pay him enough attention to make him have one. The closest they'd ever gotten was when he was thirteen and his dad told him that if he got a girl pregnant, he shouldn't even  _think_  his parents were going to help out. Since when he was thirteen, he couldn't even get a non-Willow girl to  _talk_  to him, he'd just been confused.   
  
Which seemed to be about par for the course, because after Giles' little "congratulations" speech, Xander had no idea  _what_  he was supposed to think. Was Giles honestly trying to congratulate him, and just really sucking at it? This  _was_  the man they'd once seen practicing his suave moves on a wooden chair; it was possible that he hadn't been able to overcome his Britishness enough to sound normal.   
  
On the other hand, he might just have known Xander long enough to know that Xander sometimes did things without thinking. Like proposing to Anya because he thought they were all going to die, and then proposing again because he didn't want her to  _know_  that was why. He did love her, and he thought he'd probably want to get married to her one of these days--just, maybe, not right now.   
  
Maybe Giles had just picked up on that. It wasn't his fault that Xander still, every now and then, caught himself wondering whether or not he had any business marrying Anya--or any woman--until he figured himself out.   
  
Still, it was too late now, and anyway, things would probably work out okay in the end.   
  


****

  
  
  
"This is still the guitar, right?" Xander said. He wanted to take a step backward, but he still had enough functioning brain to recognize that it might be a bad move. Not that anything terrible would happen, but he didn't want to actually  _offend_  Giles. Not when Giles had just been trying to be nice to him. He hadn't realized that when he offered Xander a shoulder to cry on, Xander was going to take him literally.   
  
Well, kind of literally. He hadn't  _cried_ , exactly. He thought he might feel a little better if he did, but he couldn't. But he'd broken down, and Giles had given him a friendly, comforting hug, and it was  _Xander_  who'd done the hugging-too-tight and sliding-too-close thing.   
  
Then the backing-away thing, because what the  _hell_  was he thinking? Anya hadn't been dead a week, and even if they hadn't been a couple any more, they  _might_  have been heading back in that direction. So it was beyond stupid of him to go around clinging to Giles like that, even if Giles didn't seem to have noticed.   
  
"The guitar?"   
  
Xander shrugged. "Never mind." He'd had to admit to himself that it probably hadn't been the guitar, anyway. It wasn't  _Giles_ , really; it was just the not-straight part of Xander's brain kicking him in the skull and demanding that Xander finally start paying attention to it.   
  
That was what this was, too: his brain telling him that once he was ready to move forward, maybe he should start listening to  _everything_  it told him, and not just the comfortable parts. Xander wasn't sure he wanted to--he  _did_  like women, and his life would definitely be less complicated--but he thought he might have to.  
  
It wasn't about Giles, though. That would just be too weird.   
  


****

  
  
Xander wasn't stupid, no matter what his high school geometry teacher had told him, but right now it was getting hard to remember that.   
  
The other thing it was getting hard to remember was why the hell he'd ever thought this was a good idea. For one thing, he was opening himself up to rejection from the other half of the human race, now. And not just rejection; he was sure there was some freaky demon-bug-monster guy out there just drooling in anticipation, considering the way his luck went.   
  
For another, he liked  _women_. The only women at this bar were too interested in each other to pay any attention to him, and while that was hot, Willow had--after a smug little "I knew it!" and then a whole lot of supportive but confusing babble--stressed to him that ogling the lesbians was uncool. And, Xander would guess, even less cool if you were supposedly there to meet men.   
  
He didn't think he wanted to meet men. At least, he was pretty sure he didn't want to have met any of the guys he'd talked to tonight. It probably wasn't their fault; Xander just didn't want to make small talk, or lie about his job, or explain why he kept glancing up at the mirror above the bar to make sure the guy he was talking to had a reflection.   
  
These things took time, he reminded himself; it wasn't like he was going to find a hot guy and immediately feel as comfortable with him as he did with Willow, or Buffy, or Giles.   
  
Except that he was trying not to think about Giles, right now, because he kept realizing that he was comparing the guys he was meeting tonight to Giles--not as smart, not as attractive, just not as  _Giles_.   
  
Maybe he  _was_  stupid after all, because something could stare him right in the face and he could still totally miss it.   
  


****

  
  
"Xander, I'm flattered, but I'm not interested in being an experiment."   
  
For a split second, that brought to mind images of test tubes and Bunsen burners from chemistry lab, until what Giles had actually just  _said_  sunk in, and Xander started wishing that the floor would swallow him up.   
  
He had  _totally_  said everything wrong. Okay, yes, Giles would be the first guy Xander had actually done anything with, but he'd had a  _lot_  of time to think during his assignment to Africa, and he'd stopped being weirded out by one, being bi (he could even say it, out loud, to other people), and two, being interested in Giles.   
  
Giles  _got_  him. They understood each other. They mostly got along. He liked hanging out with Giles, and he was fairly sure that he'd like doing more than that with him. He liked thinking about it, anyway, which was a good sign. But then he'd come over to Giles' place for dinner, and he'd decided now was as good a time as any to tell Giles about what he'd been thinking.   
  
It was starting to look like he'd been wrong. "Who said anything about an experiment?" He wasn't going to yell. Yelling wouldn't get them anywhere; it would just convince Giles that he was right: Xander was just screwed up, and the smart thing for Giles to do would be to stay the hell away from him. That was the last thing Xander wanted.   
  
Giles took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I  _do_  understand, believe me. And I don't blame you for wanting you to satisfy your curiosity with someone safe, but I'm afraid I can't be that person."   
  
Xander snorted. "You think you're safe?  _Safe_  would be some guy I met in the grocery store. Safe would be-- _Andrew_. You're not safe." He pushed his plate out of the way; this evening was shaping up to be humiliating enough without getting his elbow in the gravy while he was ranting. "Safe would be pretending none of this happened, pretending I'd never felt like this, dating women and not even letting myself think about this. About  _you_. But you're not safe."   
  
If you cared about somebody, they could hurt you. And yeah, Xander had mostly been on the jackass side of that equation, in the past, but that didn't mean things couldn't change. So the last thing Giles would ever be was  _safe_. "If you're not interested," he went on, "that's cool. I can handle rejection. I mean, I'm going to go sit in my hotel room and order room service and stare at late-night infomercials, but I'll be okay. Just say the word, and we don't ever have to talk about this again."   
  
Giles didn't say anything, though; he got up and took their plates over to the sink, instead, so Xander kept talking--anything to fill the awful silence. "But this isn't an  _experiment_. This is--I went out, right before I left the country, okay? And every single guy I met was too young or too blond or too dumb or too  _not you_. So tell me to go away if you want to, but don't tell me that this is an experiment."   
  
"Xander--" Giles began, but it only vaguely registered with Xander; once he'd started talking, he'd realized that he had a lot to get off his chest.   
  
"It's not like I just woke up this morning and thought I'd see how the other half lives, or something."  
  
"No," Giles said, speaking quickly; Xander subsided, figuring he at least owed Giles a chance to talk. "I know you haven't. And I've also seen that this has been a… a problem, for you, from time to time."   
  
Xander sighed. Okay, that was fair. "Look, I don't know--talk to Willow, or something. She'll tell you." Then he smiled in spite of himself. "She might be a little surprised about the 'into you' part, because I left that out when I was talking to her, just in case things went… well, like this." No point in making things even more awkward than they were already going to be, after all. "But she can tell you that I stopped freaking out a while ago."  
  
Giles nodded slightly; it looked like that was all the answer Xander was going to get from him. But, he realized, that also meant Giles hadn't said he wasn't interested. And he'd made things bad enough now that it was worth taking a chance. "Give me a month," he suggested. "Talk to Willow. See if I change my mind. A month's a long time to wait for an 'experiment,' isn't it?"  
  
"A month?" The corners of Giles' mouth quirked upward.  _Please don't be about to laugh at me,_  Xander prayed silently. It worked; all Giles did was smile. "I think I can wait a month," he said. "I've waited this long for you to get yourself sorted, after all. I can wait another month to be sure."  
  
Xander would've liked to say that made all the floundering worthwhile, but he had to be honest; there'd been a  _lot_  of floundering.   
  
But it made up for a lot of it, anyway. 

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


End file.
